Trace Memory

'He's OK,' said Jack. 'He's with me.'

'Yes. I can see that,' said Hugo, and then, turning to Michael: 'Are you enjoying all the fun of the fair, young man?'

Michael didn't answer.

'Ah,' said Hugo. 'Silent and subservient. Just your type, eh, Jack?'

'OK,' said Jack. 'Now what?'

Hugo laughed, and took one lick of the lollipop, mashing his tongue against the roof of his mouth as if it tasted bitter. 'I never was one for sweets,' he said. 'Always more of a savoury person.'

'Cut this,' said Jack. 'I'm here, just like you said. What do you know about me? About who I am?'

'Hmm,' said Hugo. 'Not very gentlemanly or polite, Jack. I don't respond well to such blunt questioning. Follow me.'

They followed Hugo out of the funfair and back along the promenade, past holidaying families and elderly couples, until they came to the crumbling facade of the Empire Pavilion. A sign above its entrance announced a concert for a singer who had died some years ago, and the framed posters had all faded and curled in the sun. The doors were chipped and peeling, with broken windows boarded up by sheets of plywood.

'Beautiful building, don't you think?' said Hugo. 'A crying shame it's in such disrepair. Its days are numbered, I feel. Progress hates a ruin.' He reached inside his jacket and produced a small bunch of keys, checking each one in turn before holding one of them up. Ah,' he said, 'this one. Follow me.'

'We're not going in there,' said Jack. Anything could be in there.'

Hugo nodded sagely. 'Quite,' he said. Anything could, indeed, be in there. Answers, for example, could be in there.'

'What kind of answers?' asked Jack.

'Answers to your questions, Mr — oh, I'm sorry — Captain

Harkness. So many questions which your little circle of friends seems unable or unwilling to answer. Answers regarding your inability to shuffle off this mortal coil, perhaps? Or might we find answers for your little time- travelling companion?'

Jack looked at Michael, and saw in his eyes the same look of anguished hope he knew he had in his.

'But of course,' said Hugo, 'if you choose to distrust me, you'll never find out. Will you?'

Jack sighed heavily, the only signal Hugo needed to unlock and then open the peeling, graffiti-covered door. With his hand on his pistol, Jack followed Hugo into the cavernous gloom of the Empire Pavilion, with Michael close behind. For a moment they stood in impenetrable darkness, until Jack and Michael heard the loud clunk of a switch somewhere, and a number of lights flickered into life.

Compared with its worn and weathered exterior, the interior of the pavilion had a certain, threadbare glamour to it. With just the right amount of imagination it was possible to picture its halcyon days, when men in dinner jackets and women in evening wear might have passed through the doors for dinner and a dance, not so many years ago.

Hugo led them up a sweeping staircase and past a bar room full of upturned stools and tables before taking them down into the pavilion's ballroom. In the centre of the dance floor, beneath a single spotlight, three men and a woman sat around a small, round table. They weren't the kind of people Jack had been expecting. He'd expected a dozen more Hugos, with public-school voices and folded handkerchiefs in their breast pockets. These people were young, and dressed like students. The men had long hair and beards, and the woman was bedecked in beads and ribbons.

'This is our gathering,' said Hugo.

'These?' Jack said, laughing. '

These are your friends?'

'They are,' said Hugo, flaring his nostrils. 'And what of it, Jack?'

'How old are you all?' asked Jack. 'Twenty? Twenty-one?

I was expecting… Well, I don't know what I was expecting, but this? Beatniks? You've brought me here to meet a group of beatniks?'

'We're not beatniks, actually,' said a young man in a black polo-neck sweater with a peace sign pendant around his neck. 'We're revolutionaries.'

'Oh,' said Jack, 'you're revolutionaries.

Well, excuse me, but this is one revolution that most definitely won't be televised.'

Hugo and the people around the table frowned.

'We know things,' said the man with the peace sign pendant. 'There are eye-witness testimonies. Albion Hospital, London, in 1941. Maidens Point in 1943. The Torchwood Estate in 1879.'

'Torchwood…' said Michael.

Jack turned to face him. 'You know that name?'

Michael nodded.

'We could continue,' said the woman in the beads. 'St Teilo's Hospital, 1918; Cardiff, 1869; the so-called 'fairies' of Roundstone Woods… All evidence of paranormal activities and extraterrestrial visitors to this planet. All officially denied or debunked by Her Majesty's Government.'

'Well there's your answer, then,' said Jack. 'Denied and debunked. Did it ever occur to you that none of those things mean anything? That people might just be making stuff up?'

The people around the table laughed.

'Oh, come, come, Jack,' said Hugo. 'What use is there in denying it any further when you know that my friends here are telling the truth? There have been many unexplained goings-on this last century. Strange things that defy all logic, unless one applies an open and analytical mind to them. You, for example, Jack.'

'You're wearing very well for a man who must be, what, a hundred and twenty?' said the man with the pendant.

'OK,' said Jack, 'so just assuming you guys are onto something, what purpose does any of this serve?'

'We're here for the truth, Jack,' said Hugo. 'The British Government has made a number of important scientific — not to mention philosophical and political — discoveries this last hundred years. Discoveries it has kept a secret from the public, and from our neighbouring nations.'

'With good reason,' said Jack, coldly.

'Oh really?' said Hugo. 'And so it is down to the upper echelons to decide what is and isn't in the best interests of the country? Of the world? Come on, Jack, do you really believe that? I always thought you were a little more rebellious than that. You never seemed the Queen and Country sort. Well, certainly not the Country sort, anyway.'

'It's not about Queen and Country,' said Jack. 'Nobody benefits from knowing every secret there is. There would be mass panic. Confusion. Some things are best unknown.'

'Like weapons, Jack?' said Hugo.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'These visitors haven't always come unarmed. They don't always 'come in peace', as it were. And who gets to keep all those wonderful new gadgets and gizmos that they bring here? Are they disposed of, perhaps? Or are they stored, examined, and put towards the efforts of a belligerent few in the name of preserving their interests? Hardly seems like protecting lives then, does it, Jack? How many devices capable of killing hundreds, maybe thousands of people have been dismantled and redesigned by our clandestine organisations? How many new bombs that could put Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the shade have benefited from a little extraterrestrial help? One shudders to think.'

'So what are you going to do?' asked Jack. 'Talk to the newspapers? You know they won't listen.'

Hugo laughed. It was genuine and confident enough to make Jack feel uneasy.

'The press?' said Hugo. 'The venerable fourth estate?

Oh please, Jack, don't make me laugh. The papers have little time for real news any more. They're too busy telling us about George Best and Brigitte Bardot to ever give us the cold, hard truth. No… There really is no point in us contacting the press with the information that we have. Better, I think, to level the playing field. When the Americans first developed the atom bomb, there were, thankfully, brave souls willing to transfer the information to